Imagination and Consciousness

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the question of consciousness, our sense of self, and how we are able to imagine things when they are not there, which are problems that have troubled the great minds of philosophy for thousands of years. Consciousness has been linked to language, has been married to the mind and divorced from the body; it has been denied to animals, opposed to the subconscious and declared irreducible, but still it defies definition, and the debate rages on as to why we evolved it at all. But perhaps science will finally provide the answer.

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Guests

• Professor Gerald Edelman No other episodes
  Director of the Neurosciences, Institute in California
• Igor Aleksander 3 episodes
  Professor of Neural Engineering Systems, Imperial College, London
• Margaret Boden No other episodes
  Professor of Philosophy and Psychology, University of Sussex

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Programme ID: p00546vr

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00546vr

Auto-category: 128 (Philosophy of Mind)